Paying for Care

Led by AcademyHealth and funded by The Donaghue Foundation, this final report outlines a collaborative process and research priorities for achieving health care that is both high value and equitable.

As health care costs continue to rise and health disparities persist, the need to redesign our health care system to deliver better, more equitable care is paramount—and we must have a strong evidence base grounded in the needs of our communities to inform this work. In response to this urgent need, AcademyHealth launched a project in October 2021 with funding from The Donaghue Foundation to advance research on high-value, equitable care.

AcademyHealth members offer recommendations for the United States health care system to accelerate its efforts to provide better, more affordable care by changing how it pays for care; how it delivers care; and how it reports on the safety and quality of the care provided.

The lack of high quality, accessible national claims data has long been a roadblock to robust Medicaid research and subsequent evidence-based policymaking in the United States. While the release of TAF marked a significant improvement, research faculty with AcademyHealth’s Medicaid Data Learning Network (MDLN) outline important steps that state and federal policy makers can take to improve data quality, accessibility, and usability.

In a two-part essay for JAMA Health Forum and a NY Times column, Dave Chokshi and Aaron Carroll respectively share insights from the 2023 AcademyHealth/Commonwealth Fund study tour to New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore that should be instructive for the U.S. health care and policy community.

Health care expert and former journalist Michael Millenson discusses the history and timeliness of health policy-related cartoons and comic strips.